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My MacBook keyboard is broken and it's insanely expensive to fix

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Re: My MacBook keyboard is broken and it's insanely expensive to fix

#481

Post by alsetmusic »

aurareturn wrote: post #222
_lvbh wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've personally found the repairability to be worth the price for me. I got the baseline $999 back when it launched & have done stupid things like spilling a whole gallon of milk on it. Had to take it apart & clean as well as replace the keyboard but now it's still chugging along. Used to own a MacBook & the keyboard started dying after a year with a failed A key. Very expensive to replace so I just remapped caps loc…

I don't think the new keyboards have issues as the butterfly era. Indeed Mac keyboards were junk before Apple Silicon.

They were solid before the butterfly design too. It was just Apple's inability to admit the new design was shit and their hubris that they'd engineer their way to a solution for so long that the whole world became aware of the issue when mainstream journalists started writing about it in major publications. The Wall Street Journal article with no letter 'e's was brilliant.

Re: My MacBook keyboard is broken and it's insanely expensive to fix

#482

Post by eszed »

piekvorst wrote: post #477
eszed wrote: post #469

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the government is orders of magnitude more powerful than any corporation. As a practical matter, that's untrue in many, many places around the world, and there are no reasons why it couldn't become true in the USA, or any other advanced democracy. Even if you don't think that is yet the case where you live, can you at least agree with me that many leaders of / investors in large corporations want it to be, and are…

I do agree. In many places, governments are weak, captured, or corrupt. But those are mixed economies, in which state and corporate power fuse into one corrupt swamp: corporations lobby for regulations to crush rivals, officials sell favors. That's not evidence that economic power equals political power, it's evidence that abandoning the principle of a government limited to retaliatory force produces a cold civil war…

A government

> standing in for many individuals who share a common injury.

Sounds like a synonym for "public interest" to me! Is that a semantic difference, or do you think there's something substantive to it?

I'd like to know how you'd handle the case of a new industrial plant (let's even say it's a brand new technology) that will exhaust lead into the atmosphere. Does the government have to wait until there's demonstrable harm, and then lodge a suit in court? Isn't it... cleaner (for want of a better word, and no pun intended) to have a law in place that says "No Lead-spewing (as defined by [reasonable technical standard]) Allowed", and prevent it being built altogether? From another angle, under which paradigm would hypothetical investors prefer to operate?

In fact, and this is true, industry often requests regulations be put in place, because they'd like to be certain that their investments won't be subjected to the uncertainty of (private or public) litigation. Yes, this can be malign (in the cases of corruption, or regulatory capture, or incumbents freezing out smaller competitors), but at its most basic the request can be seen as benign: "we'd like to comply with community standards; please write down what they are, and we'll follow them" - no violence required or implied. It's also, and to my way of thinking more importantly, a way to break out of prisoner's dilemma equilibria, where all players can agree the sector as a whole will be better off without defectors, but appeal to an outside, neutral party to keep themselves honest.

I'm also curious about what seems to be your premise that The Courts are separate from The State. That's not how I think of them at all! I mean, aren't they, kind of by definition? After all, if one ignores a judgement - even civil - isn't the ruling ultimately enforced by, well, Force?

Re: My MacBook keyboard is broken and it's insanely expensive to fix

#483

Post by dwaltrip »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #345
lelanthran wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A lot of people would be pissed to have MacBooks with worse "build quality" even if they were more reparable. It is not a given that being repairable results in worse build quality.

It is a given if someone could have made a superior product in the last 15 years, i.e. more repairable laptop with higher build quality, they would have.

It kind of sounds like you are saying it is impossible to improve on the current state of the world.

That if it was possible to improve things, someone would have already done it. And they haven’t, so it must not be possible.

That feels a bit extreme… Maybe I’m misunderstanding?

Re: My MacBook keyboard is broken and it's insanely expensive to fix

#484

Post by lotsofpulp »

dwaltrip wrote: post #483
lotsofpulp wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is a given if someone could have made a superior product in the last 15 years, i.e. more repairable laptop with higher build quality, they would have.

It kind of sounds like you are saying it is impossible to improve on the current state of the world. That if it was possible to improve things, someone would have already done it. And they haven’t, so it must not be possible. That feels a bit extreme… Maybe I’m misunderstanding?

No, it is certainly possible to come up with an innovation that allows progress.

But the tone I get from discussions about repairability and performance is that it would be trivial to make the device, if only businesses wanted to.

However, given the fact that it hasn’t happened yet from a variety of alternative manufacturers, the probability seems very low that the ideal device is possible with current technology at a price that is viable.

Basically, it is a competitive market (or was), and what won out was what was possible. Barring some leap in technology, it is unrealistic to assume we can do better without suffering tradeoffs.

Re: My MacBook keyboard is broken and it's insanely expensive to fix

#485

Post by 8bitsrule »

I'm reminded of my surprise when my Mac's 'super' (their name) floppy drive quit working because the CPU fan was pulling air through it all day. Post 90-day warranty, the replacement cost at the time was 1/5 of what the machine cost.

IMO, Apple hardware was never the company's strong point. And they refused to supply individual replacement parts.

Re: My MacBook keyboard is broken and it's insanely expensive to fix

#486

Post by gcanyon »

southerntofu wrote: post #374
gcanyon wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you point to an objective assessment of Obama's drone policy?

Unfortunately, i don't know of a complete reference resource. I'd be interested if you found one. A quick research later i found this CFR resource [1] which probably underestimates the number of civilians killed. I remember reports at the time on the Intercept and other media about the entire kill chain. If i remember correctly, the policy was to count anyone who was not proved to be a civilian as an active enemy in…

> famously and publicly joking ...at the white house correspondents dinner. I think that context matters.

I also think drone strikes exacerbate public outrage much the way mass shootings do: if we want to decrease gun deaths, limiting AR-15s isn't the way to do it because the vast majority of gun deaths are handguns. But mass shootings upset people, so we outlaw the guns that upset them. Similarly with drones, people don't get as upset about tens of thousands killed in a broader war, they're put off by the smaller number of casualties caused by drones.

You would think that if the policy was as flawed as you describe it would be easier to find evidence of it now?

Re: My MacBook keyboard is broken and it's insanely expensive to fix

#487

Post by xenadu02 »

Tempest1981 wrote: post #468
bonyt wrote: post #43

I replaced the keyboard MacBook Air M1 keyboard with a $20 model from Amazon and it's been going strong for a full year. I had spilled ginger ale on the original. The board is riveted in, but there are enough screws to hold the replacement in place. Removing the board is a shockingly violent process, but it worked for me. Keyboard: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CQBVMM3X (price has gone up). Video of rivets breaking: ht…

> I missed a screw and slightly cut my hand here too After a nasty gash from a washing machine, which impacted my typing for a week, I got a pair of these: https://www.amazon.com/Mechanix-Wear-Utility-Gloves-Large/dp... $14, may save a doctor visit

I recommend ANSI rated cut protection gloves: https://www.mcmaster.com/9915N987/

I use them when working with sheet metal. They are high-dexterity. Thin and flexible. Steel threads are woven into the fabric. McMaster has a variety of high dexterity gloves - fingerless, insulating, cut-resistant.

Re: My MacBook keyboard is broken and it's insanely expensive to fix

#488

Post by jen20 »

ezst wrote: post #409
rogerrogerr wrote: post #356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess I'm happy being dumb if it means I deserve a laptop with a battery that lasts all day, a trackpad that doesn't feel like it's covered in dry syrup, a case that doesn't make noises when I pick it up, and a processor that feels like alien tech.

I haven't used a laptop in the last decade that wouldn't last a whole day on battery, or would hold any of those qualifiers for that matter, from Apple or other manufacturers. Not that Apple are bad devices, but they are flawed like the rest of them (often less, and sometimes more in areas that may matter less to you, the software being a major and increasingly one to me). Also good to remember that Apple is a compan…

OK, so what have you used? Makes, models and years would be ideal.

Re: My MacBook keyboard is broken and it's insanely expensive to fix

#489

Post by roboror »

piekvorst wrote: post #471
vrganj wrote: post #403

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sue them in who's court? With who to enforce the ruling? The... government ?

Courts, police, and the army are proper. That's government. The difference is what kind of government. A proper government holds a monopoly on retaliatory force, it acts after someone initiates force or fraud. It doesn't dictate your screw size, battery compartment, or production method before you've harmed anyone.

Are there laws and lawmakers in this scenario?

Re: My MacBook keyboard is broken and it's insanely expensive to fix

#490

Post by jen20 »

TheLegace wrote: post #442
Dusseldorf wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't want to sound like a jerk, but have you considered that you might need to improve your putting/unplugging habits? I used to have connectors and cords break after around that much time. Around 2018 or so I bought a new set of chargers and decent quality cloth sheathed cables. Because all my cords were new, I was much more diligent about carefully plugging and unplugging (no mashing the port, no flexing across…

I don't understand this logic. If lightning connector had less issues than USB-C how could it the users fault for not being careful. This exactly how engineers/developers answer to problems they cause with bad engineering/design choices. Anyone that gives feedback is blamed. It leads to terrible engineering decisions like the USB standard, which frankly has always been bloated and terrible because of its design by co…

A good option here is to use MagSafe for charging. I don't think I've ever plugged anything into the USB-C port on my iPhone.
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